A groundbreaking new study shows a promising link between a cancer treatment and lessening coronavirus-related inflammation.
"Therapeutic treatment with two doses of Topotecan (TPT), an FDA-approved TOP1 inhibitor, suppresses infection-induced inflammation in hamsters," the study concluded, opening the door to clinical trials.
"The way (Topotecan) works in cancer is different than the way it works to suppress inflammation because the target of this molecule is a protein that does many things," said Dr. Ivan Marazzi, co-author of the study and associate professor in the Microbiology Department at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The timing of when it could be used in a COVID-19 case is "super important," he added.
"We want to treat people that have ramping inflammation," Dr. Marazzi told KCBS Radio’s "Ask An Expert" on Thursday. "We don’t want to treat people before inflection or give it as a preventive treatment. This is not an anti-viral, obviously."
Doctors are looking for two to three signs that will signal that advancing inflammation. "The temporal progression in which this occurs can be different for different viruses and bacterial infections," he said. "With COVID it’s particularly complicated."
A patient’s weight and underlying health conditions are major factors, he added, in the progression of the virus over the course of "days or weeks, and we are still trying to figure that out."
They’re in the process of doing clinical trials in India, with a second round of clinical trials starting in Brazil next month.
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